China: The Quality Of Life
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
At a pivotal moment in the twentieth century, two of the West's most seasoned observers of the East turned their unflinching gaze on the People's Republic of China — and what they found was a civilization in breathtaking transformation. China: The Quality of Life chronicles the lived realities of ordinary Chinese men and women in the post-revolutionary era, presenting a ground-level portrait of agriculture, industry, healthcare, and communal existence that cuts through the ideological noise of the Cold War with remarkable clarity. Veteran journalist Wilfred Burchett, writing alongside New Zealand poet and longtime China resident Rewi Alley, details the human texture of Maoist China with a rare combination of reportorial rigour and personal intimacy, drawing on decades of direct experience to argue that the revolution's true measure lay not in political doctrine but in the daily conditions of its people. This is a work of profound sociopolitical significance, arriving at a time when China remained deeply opaque to Western eyes, and it stands as one of the most vivid first-hand accounts of Chinese society in the early 1970s. Burchett's characteristically bold prose, sharpened by Alley's deep cultural fluency, illuminates themes of collective identity, socialist modernisation, and the enduring spirit of a billion-strong nation remaking itself from the soil up. Whether one reads it as history, journalism, or political testament, China: The Quality of Life raises questions about progress, humanity, and power that remain as urgent and unresolved today as when the ink first dried.
Author: Wilfred Burchett With Rewi Alley
Format: Paperback
Genre: Asian history
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
At a pivotal moment in the twentieth century, two of the West's most seasoned observers of the East turned their unflinching gaze on the People's Republic of China — and what they found was a civilization in breathtaking transformation. China: The Quality of Life chronicles the lived realities of ordinary Chinese men and women in the post-revolutionary era, presenting a ground-level portrait of agriculture, industry, healthcare, and communal existence that cuts through the ideological noise of the Cold War with remarkable clarity. Veteran journalist Wilfred Burchett, writing alongside New Zealand poet and longtime China resident Rewi Alley, details the human texture of Maoist China with a rare combination of reportorial rigour and personal intimacy, drawing on decades of direct experience to argue that the revolution's true measure lay not in political doctrine but in the daily conditions of its people. This is a work of profound sociopolitical significance, arriving at a time when China remained deeply opaque to Western eyes, and it stands as one of the most vivid first-hand accounts of Chinese society in the early 1970s. Burchett's characteristically bold prose, sharpened by Alley's deep cultural fluency, illuminates themes of collective identity, socialist modernisation, and the enduring spirit of a billion-strong nation remaking itself from the soil up. Whether one reads it as history, journalism, or political testament, China: The Quality of Life raises questions about progress, humanity, and power that remain as urgent and unresolved today as when the ink first dried.